Quantifying the Hurricane Catastrophe Risk to Offshore Wind Power

The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that over 50 GW of offshore wind power will be required for the United States to generate 20% of its electricity from wind. Developers are actively planning offshore wind farms along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts and several leases have been signed for offshore sites. These planned projects are in areas that are sometimes struck by hurricanes. We present a method to estimate the catastrophe risk to offshore wind power using simulated hurricanes. Using this method, we estimate the fraction of offshore wind power simultaneously offline and the cumulative damage in a region. In Texas, the most vulnerable region we studied, 10% of offshore wind power could be offline simultaneously because of hurricane damage with a 100‐year return period and 6% could be destroyed in any 10‐year period. We also estimate the risks to single wind farms in four representative locations; we find the risks are significant but lower than those estimated in previously published results. Much of the hurricane risk to offshore wind turbines can be mitigated by designing turbines for higher maximum wind speeds, ensuring that turbine nacelles can turn quickly to track the wind direction even when grid power is lost, and building in areas with lower risk.     

Comments on Willis,Wells and Picou

Most research relating objective indicators of the quality of environment to subjective indicators of the quality of life has failed to find a relationship between the two. This research, by using community data, establishes an association between the local environment and perceived life quality, and in doing so, provides empirical support for focusing on local as welt as national investigations of life quality.     

Recent Happenings in the Social Studies

This article details the “journey box” project process enacted by two elementary preservice teacher cohorts. Engaging in activities and projects that promote a sense of investment in not only consuming but producing historical narratives, preservice teachers potentially become interested in sharing this type of learning with their students.     

Siting Noxious Facilities: A Test of the Facility Siting Credo

Over the past decade it has become increasingly difficult to site noxious facilities, despite the fact that there is a growing need to do so. To address this problem, a set of guidelines for a fairer, wiser, and more workable siting process—the Facility Siting Credo—was developed during a National Facility Siting Workshop in 1990. This paper presents an empirical test of these guidelines. A questionnaire based on the Credo was completed by stakeholders in 29 waste facility siting cases, both successful and unsuccessful, across the United States and Canada. Using an independent determination of outcome (success), a preliminary ranking of the importance of various Credo principles was obtained. The data reveal that establishing trust between the developer and host community is an important factor in facilitating the siting process. The siting process is most likely to be successful when the community perceives the facility design to be appropriate and to satisfy its needs. Public participation also is seen to be an important process variable, particularly if it encourages a view that the facility best meets community needs. Moreover, a siting process where communities volunteer to host facilities is an approach that holds promise for meeting many of these key success criteria.     

What Determines Trust in Information About Food-Related Risks? Underlying Psychological Constructs

Trust in risk information about food related-hazards may be an important determinant of public reactions to risk information. One of the central questions addressed by the risk communication literature is why some individuals and organizations are trusted as sources of risk information and others are not. Industry and government often lack public trust, whereas other sources (for example, consumer organizations, the quality media, medical doctors) are highly trusted. Problematically, previous surveys and questionnaire studies have utilized questions generated by the investigators themselves to assess public perceptions of trust in different sources. Furthermore, no account of the hazard domain was made. In the first study reported here, semistructured interviewing was used to elicit underpinning constructs determining trust and distrust in different sources providing food-related risk information ( n = 35). In the second study, the repertory grid method was used to elicit the terminology that respondents use to distinguish between different potential food-related information sources ( n = 35), the data being submitted to generalised Procrustes analysis. The results of the two studies were combined and validated in survey research ( n = 888) where factor analysis indicated that knowledge in itself does not lead to trust, but that trusted sources are seen to be characterised by multiple positive attributes. Contrary to previous research, complete freedom does not lead to trust—rather sources which possess moderate accountability are seen to be the most trusted.     

Old Structures,New Relations: How Community Development Credit Unions Define Organizational Boundaries

Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate environment defines the rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform in order to receive legitimacy and support (Scott, 1992:132). In this paper we consider the question of how an organization can achieve legitimacy and support without necessarily compromising its organizational forms or practices to isomorphic pressures. We frame the question in terms of the boundaries between organizations and their environments. Where the population ecology studies show the survival value of adopting known organizational forms and practices, and neoinstitutionalism addresses the need to display compliance with accepted forms, our case study demonstrates the possibility of removing an organization or set of organizations from the familiar interaction by naming it as a subfield of the organizational field, sharing the environment, but out of the way of predefined norms and practices.     

The Chicago School,So-Called

Many sociologists believe in the myth of a Chicago School, a unified and coherent body of thought and research practice carried on at the University of Chicago from the 1920s through the 1960s. Chicago never constituted such a coherent system and is better understood as a school of activity, a group of people who cooperated in the day-to-day running of a major department.     

A Comparison of the Effect of Two Computer-Based Counseling Interventions on the Career Decidedness of Adults

This article describes two computer-based career counseling interventions provided for adults who are auto workers in career transition. It was found that these workers can increase their level of career decidedness and make progress in their commitment to occupational choice through the use of a computer-based career counseling program. Supporting previous research, this study indicated that computer-plus-counselor intervention is more effective in this type of career counseling than the computer-only intervention.